Revolution

révolution

Worked through in 27 videos · 39 passages.

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Summary

Dominique Pagani does not primarily associate revolution with barricades. He sees it as a radical change that can be silent and peaceful1. With Hegel, he thinks of it within a dialectic of evolution and revolution: slow quantitative growth leads to a qualitative leap, like the newborn's first breath2. The word comes from astronomy. In Kant, a revolution in thought brings physics into science. He distinguishes revolt, which is necessary, from revolution, which passes through a theoretical detour; without that detour, revolt plays into the hands of counter-revolution3. He places our modernity in three upheavals: the English industrial revolution, the French Revolution and nascent Romanticism. For him, since the Bastille, revolution and counter-revolution have alternated constantly, and the counter-revolutionary periods are the longer ones4. In Hegel, what is revolutionary about the Revolution is the fluidification of human relations and the end of the fear of death5. He also points out that the word has been misappropriated, for instance in Pétain's "national revolution".

Summary produced automatically from 39 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Cycle 15 · 28 Aug 2026From Copernicus to Lenin: revolution!

44:30In Kant, the passage from groping attempts to the secure path of science is the effect of a revolution; the word comes from astronomy.
1:05:47Physics too enters science only through a sudden revolution of thought after a slow evolution.

Talks · 16 May 2026Mali: a response to Emmanuel Macron's remarks at the Africa Forward summit

41:03The French Revolution is an "original sin" that remains a source of annoyance for businesses and the free market.

Cycle 14 · 4 Feb 2026The return of fascism

19:30The French Revolution is not reducible to the abolition of privileges: in it the French got rid of the fear of death.
1:01:59Revolution presupposes a theory: without revolutionary theory, no revolutionary practice; the Age of Enlightenment preceded it.

Talks · 2 Dec 2024Napoleon, or the reasons of cunning

15:55Since the storming of the Bastille, we have lived in an unceasing struggle between revolution and counter-revolution.
25:13England leads the anti-French coalitions because they are counter-revolutionary.

Cycle 12 · 24 Jun 2024For a “fresh and joyful” apocalypse?

1:17:02There is no revolution without revolt, but revolt without a theoretical detour misses revolution and plays into the counter-revolution's hands.

Series · 29 Sept 2023Kleist, “On the Marionette Theatre”

1:17Since the new industrial regime, we have lived permanently within the conflict between Revolution and counter-revolution.

Talks · 14 Jul 2022From Plato to world revolution

9:12An absolute beginning whose effects are still felt; it is not a revolt.
51:28According to Hegel, Plato's principle is the pivot of world revolution; philosophy is revolutionary in its essence.

Cycle 10 · 7 Apr 2022#12 From Kafka to Proust, the dialectical passage from the intermezzo to the perpetuated edge

2:11:52Hegel opposes continuous evolution to the qualitative leap, as the first breath interrupts the long silent nourishment of the fetus.

Talks · 19 Mar 2022Hölderlin, poetry and politics

17:25Since the storming of the Bastille, revolution and counter-revolution have alternated; periods of counter-revolution are longer, hence the name "century of revolutions" for the nineteenth century.

Talks · 16 Jan 2021The world before, the world after (part 1)

7:56True revolutions, like the French Revolution after the English industrial revolution, are breaks from which our modernity emerged, incomparable to the "revolutions" announced today.
34:08Revolution is not necessarily progress: Pétain and the Nazis spoke of national revolution; concepts become perverted in troubled times.

Series · 11 Jan 2021#8 Happiness and unhappiness in music

42:41Since the Bastille, there has been a permanent struggle between revolution and counter-revolution, with longer counter-revolutionary periods.

Cycle 7 · 5 May 2020#7 Harnessed to confinitude

19:42There is a long road from revolt to revolution; Socrates is a true revolutionary.
44:49Jünger, Schmitt and Heidegger agree in opposing the revolutionary tradition: the Reformation, 1789, 1917.

Cycle 7 · 26 Apr 2020#6 Harnessed to confinitude

1:27:59The aftermath of the crisis will force a choice between revolution and counter-revolution, between red and white.

Cycle 7 · 30 Mar 2020#2 Harnessed to confinitude

37:49The conflict between absolute knowledge and absolute non-knowledge is that of revolution and counter-revolution, running through the nineteenth century up to today.
55:19We are neither in a revolutionary period nor in a counter-revolutionary one, but in the conflict of the two: that is what being dialectical means.

Series · 23 Mar 2020Introduction to the upcoming workshops

1:11:36The 19th century deserves to be called the century of revolutions; there are also silent revolutions, such as the gains of the Liberation.

Talks · 29 Sept 2019The religion of money

1:28:48Revolutions always return, from 1830 to 1917, as Rousseau had foreseen with the century of revolutions.

Cycle 5.2 · 25 Jan 2019#5.4 Introduction: nature or landscape?

15:33The French Revolution separates Poussin's world from Friedrich's. It gives rise to its avatars: 1830, 1848, the Commune, 1917, decolonization.
20:34This rupture is not a past event. It has its phases, its pauses, and its counter-revolutions.

Cycle 5.1 · 21 Nov 2018#5.2 The philosopher's Odyssey: revolutionary thought

28:03What is revolutionary in the Revolution, for Hegel, is the fluidification of human relations and the end of the fear of death.
1:19:21Dialectic of evolution-revolution: a slow quantitative growth interrupted by a qualitative leap.

Talks · 6 Oct 2018On Marx

59:18Revolution can take a thousand forms and be silent, like the emergence of hundreds of millions of Chinese from poverty.
1:00:16The distortion between today's productive forces and nineteenth-century capitalist relations of production is going to make the elastic band snap.

Talks · 12 Jun 2018In conversation with Bernard Friot (1 June 2018)

4:44A change in the mode of production, without the prerequisite of seizing state power, as with the bourgeoisie.
41:14Since 1789, we have lived in a permanent swing between revolution and counter-revolution; the word comes from astronomy.

Talks · 2 Aug 2016Tribute to Jacques D'Hondt (2)

21:54Hegel is, for D'Hondt, the philosopher of the French Revolution, whom he praises to the end as the reconciliation of the divine with the world.

Series · 1 Feb 2016Hegel on the Beach 1/5

2:07:43There is revolution because evolution has never ceased: silent quantitative growth culminates in a qualitative leap.
2:11:49Since Hegel's time, we remain caught in the conflict between revolution and counter-revolution.

Series · 29 Dec 2014O for Opposition

18:00A revolution is inscribed within a long, imperceptible evolution until the change becomes perceptible, like the newborn's first breath.

Series · 27 Sept 2014#5 Libertarian liberalism, libidinal consumption and music…

6:49Not in the spectacular sense of barricades, but basic and radical changes, which can be silent and peaceful.

Series · 23 Sept 2014#3 The myth of the noble savage in Rousseau

22:26Revolt, spontaneous, is necessary but insufficient; it only becomes revolution by making the detour through theory.

Series · 20 Sept 2014#1 Presentation: the EU, Clouscard, Rousseau

3:39Three great fractures made us what we have become: the English industrial revolution, the French political revolution and the anthropological revolution of nascent romanticism.

Series · 6 Jul 2012Radio Galère: Michel Clouscard (1)

15:05In France, every revolutionary advance (1789, the Commune, the Liberation) is followed by a counter-revolution.